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Creating Your Employee Benefit Plan Based on Employee Needs and Your Budget with Christian Moser · Budget Your Business

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I would say, like the voluntary benefit piece, you can offer it as a benefit without paying anything as the employer.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And the reason it's beneficial on the employee side is typically it's group rated, so it's a lot cheaper than if they went on the individual marketplace and got disability or critical illness or anything like that.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: So it does benefit the employee, typically at a cost per basis, and also the employer pays that bill and then recoups it on payroll deduction side.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Budget your Business, the podcast for small business owners who want to learn how to financially plan for every aspect of their business.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Scott Geller.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Today, I'm joined by Christian Moser of BNX Consulting to talk about employee benefits, specifically knowing how much it's going to cost and what all you can offer.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Hello, Christian Scott, thanks for having me.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Hello, absolutely.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: So you typically offer people to tell us a little bit about yourself, and I'm going to do that as well, but what I'd love to know is you started your own firm, BenX.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I love hearing the origin story, so if you can bake in your journey and maybe a little bit of decision-making of why you went off on your own.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a good move or just insane, but probably a little of both, a little bit of both for sure.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Still, I'm a little bit of both.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: So I started BNX two and a half years ago.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Broke off or not broke off, so so started two and a half years ago.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Previously I was with another kind of benefits firm and just really when I was there realized that like I feel like just the process, the service and the consulting around employee benefits could be a little better, specifically around our target market, which is that kind of you know, small startup business to 200 employees, kind of that small to small to mid-sized employer.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I really felt like those businesses were really getting hammered from a cost perspective when it came to employee benefits, but just also from a strictly process and service perspective.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: And a lot of the business owners that we've talked to and still talk to today before we have a conversation with them, they might offer some benefits and they have no idea why, or no idea what it costs or no idea why it costs that much.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: And so one of my favorite things to do is educate and just help business owners figure out hey, why are we even offering benefits in the first place, and so that's kind of the mindset behind why I started Binex two and a half years ago, and it's been at least a fun journey since then.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Well, good Thanks for that.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it Again.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I always enjoy the origin stories and what drives people to start their own, going down their own path and their own journey.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Well, let's kind of get started with whether I'm a new business or maybe I already have some benefits on hand as a business owner.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: How do I kind of figure out what benefits to offer?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: It's one we get almost every single day.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: And.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I will say it's twofold.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I would say it looks different for the 50-employee company who's already offering benefits versus the 12-employee company who is starting up a benefit program, but the theme is the same, meaning both companies need to understand their demographics, their employee demographics.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: They have to figure out whether you're 12 employees, 50 employees, 150, it doesn't matter really the size.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You have to figure out who am I or who is my like, what is my employee demographic and what do they want?
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: So, like I would say that's like basic number one.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And so many business owners and companies they start off and either whether they're starting benefits for the first time or maybe they've had it for a decade, scott, and they're like, how am I maximizing the ROI or the return on investments?
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: But I would say number one, for starters, whether you're 12 employees, 50 employees or 100 employees, you have to understand what your employee demographics want and your employee demographics need.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: But realize that that changes all the time.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Like just because in 2025, you had 12 employees and this is you know, maybe you look at your employees, say, like my eight of my 12 employees really want health insurance.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe the second biggest benefit is 401k in that situation In three to four years, say you're now at 18 employees or 20 employees, and now your demographics are changing.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know employees' life cycles right?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: We see that like whether you're when you're 21 to 30, you want these benefits.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: When you're 30 to 50, you preferably want these benefits.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: When you're 50 plus, you want these benefits, and that's a generalized statement.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: But it really starts with knowing your employee demographics and the way you get to know that.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Two quick tips is like you can either literally talk to every single one of your employees.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: You can have like a one-on-one and say, hey, we're thinking about offering benefits or we're thinking about revisiting the benefit program and making sure it makes sense for our employees.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So you can have, you know, one-on-one conversation with all your employees.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: If you're larger, we highly recommend at least one time a year, if not twice a year, surveys, specific benefit surveys that are short, sweet to the point.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So between the benefit surveys and the potential focus groups with larger employers, or just the one-on-one if you're smaller employers, right, the business owner or the office manager talking one-on-one with all the employees and just gather that data and then from there that's kind of the basis and the starting point of the benefit program.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, if I'm going down that path, how do I figure out how to even ask them what?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Do I even know how to ask?
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: What if I don't know what to ask?
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: As far as what my employees want.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Right, right, exactly.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: So, whether I'm going one on one or sitting out a survey, do I just say, hey, what benefits do you want?
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Or how do I kind of figure that out?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: So we have a template that's like 15 to 20 questions that we say, hey, pick a few from this template because that's a really good question, because you don't really want to ask questions that are too vague.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Whether you're doing one-on-one meetings or you're doing surveys, whatever it might be, you really want to hammer like hey, today for you and your family, what are the top three most important benefits for you?
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: You could say, hey, what are the top two or three most important benefits?
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: You can also piggyback.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It's like what are a couple of benefits two, three benefits that you might not care as much about?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Obviously, benefits, people are always going to want more, but what are a couple of benefits that you might not care as much about as the top three?
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: A lot of times we want employees to really rank their top three benefits, maybe even top five benefits.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey, if you come back and the employee's like number one, health insurance, number two, disability, number three, 401k, whatever the order might be, at least you can gather some concrete data, because without asking specific questions like that, I mean they might say you know, I want PTO, and then I want a bigger bonus.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And then you know.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I mean you could really have a large scale.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: But then also, just, it's always a mix.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I say offer or ask three types of questions.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Ask like Likert scale questions, like on a scale of one to 10, on a scale of one to five, how happy are you with our current benefit program?
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Or like on a scale of one to 10, how satisfied or how unsatisfied, and you can do that for specific benefits.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Like on a scale of one to 10, how satisfied are you with the health insurance program?
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Right, so you can do Likert scales.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And then you could also do open-ended questions so you could say like if you know what, what are like any additional benefits that you would like to see in general, so you could do some more open ended questions.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And then you could do some more like name the top two, top three.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So I would say you could have a pretty good mix of all three.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, christian so.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: So I'm sure maybe you can't share this, but what's one of the most offhanded benefits that somebody's throwing in one of these surveys?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Pet insurance is becoming a bigger one, which is pretty interesting.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I fear that would probably be.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're trying to figure out a way now how we can quote unquote offer it as a benefit, because the traditional carriers that we work with almost none not zero, but practically none offer pet insurance as a benefit.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Normally it's like an individualized property and casualty product and if you want to offer pet insurance you have to have 500 employees.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: It has to be a large population.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So we're actually working on that now, on figuring out how we can potentially offer pet insurance to 20 employee companies, right, and 50 employee companies.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Fed insurance has definitely been an interesting one, I would say specifically around the age of the workforce, because there's a lot of generalizations, right, like Gen Z.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: A lot of times it's student loan repayments, tuition reimbursements.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: I've heard more about that too, yeah.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's been a really big one for, like I would say, the under 35, you know age employees.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: But I would say like nothing really outside you know anything insane outside of those couple.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I would say that there has been some insane executive programs I've heard of, like you know, like down payments to homes and golden handcuffs and like that type of stuff.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: But as far as for like a generalized benefit, it's it's kind of you know.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Those are two that I see a lot now Student loan repayment, tuition reimbursement and then pet insurance.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Pet insurance All right, not as many country club covering country club fees anymore.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I don't think.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: No, once again, you can do a lot with deferred comp and executive benefits, but we do stay out of a lot of that stuff.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: You know if you're the CEO and you want to offer your you know VP of sales or whatever executive, that you want to offer country club membership or you want to offer a down payment to a home, and you get as you know.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: You know better than I do, but companies can really tie that to.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: You know years of service and certain benchmarks.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: And so it does make sense, I guess from where.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that's a little above our pay grade.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll stop on my fun offhanded questions there.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: So obviously, health insurance is the primary one, right?
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: There's a couple other major ones I would personally throw out, like dental vision.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: There's long-term, short-term disability.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: But you've got these top three.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Let's say you're thinking about putting together the program.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: What are the next steps around?
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, how do I decide on which ones to select?
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Good question.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So you can do a couple of different strategies here, especially if you already offer.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Like you're saying, if you already offer some benefits, maybe you offer health, dental, right now, right, or something like that.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: You can do two different strategies.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: You can use the data to increase employer contributions on the current benefits, so like, maybe you get the survey back and they're like hey, 50% employer contribution on my health insurance isn't enough, so maybe you increase the contribution on the health insurance and then offer more benefits.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Voluntary meaning employee pay.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: One of the things I'm very surprised about with companies under 100 employees, just in general, is the lack of voluntary benefits in a benefit program.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So when you're above 50 to 100 employees, most employers offer a ton of voluntary benefits.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: What I mean by that is just the employee pays for them.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: So I'm thinking critical illness, accident, maybe voluntary life, maybe a cancer policy, all these benefits that large employers offer, that people that are companies that are 25 employees or 50 employees or 75 employees don't realize they can offer these benefits For a company that is 10 employees.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: We just put in seven different benefits, seven for a company of 10 employees.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: It was like medical, dental vision, short-term, long-term life, critical illness, accident and all of this came from like what they wanted to do and what their employees were saying.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: So I would say, like the voluntary benefit piece, you can offer it as a benefit without paying anything as the employer.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: And the reason it's beneficial on the employee's side is typically it's group rated, so it's a lot cheaper than if they went on the individual marketplace and got disability or critical illness or anything like that.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: So it does benefit the employee, typically at a cost per basis, and also the employer pays that bill and then recoups it on payroll deduction side, so the employee doesn't have to worry about like paying every month or doing you know, like reconciling credit cards and figuring out like what they're paying.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: And so a lot more employers.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I think it would behoove them to offer voluntary benefits, because then you can really see what your employees like from a voluntary benefit standpoint.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And then next year you might go hey, 25 employees and 16 signed up for short-term disability, like starting in 2026, we're actually going to pay for that as a benefit for our employees as a benefit for our employees, so you can actually.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: The third way to really get some data outside of the surveys and talking to employees is by offering voluntary benefits and just seeing what your employees select.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: And is there really any downside to doing that?
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: There's none.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Now, every once in a while, like with a company that's really small, like I'm thinking, like less than 10 employees, a lot of carriers will have minimums like hey, you have to have at least three people enrolled on this benefit for us to offer as a benefit, right, right, that makes sense.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: So, you know, if you're under 10 employees, then we would probably look at hey does it make?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: do you think you can get three employees on a voluntary benefit plan, whether it's life or disability or whatever?
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: It might be Pretty much if you're over 10 employees and you have more than 20% participation within employees, there's no downside, okay.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, one of the major factors when I have conversations with small business owners is that benefits aren't cheap, right?
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Unless they're all voluntary, they're not free.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Where do I get started around understanding how I can control what the employer's cost side of the benefits are going to be?
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: So it really breaks down into like the total premium.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Like let's talk about health insurance, because health insurance is the big nugget.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Everything else is relative.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Besides health insurance right, like dental is pretty cheap, vision is pretty cheap, short-term and long-term disability are relatively cheap, life and all these other benefits are relatively cheap from a monthly cost basis.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: But health insurance the average premium is between $600 and $700 employee only, and that's not just for small business, that's for large corporations, which is also a big misconception.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: People think, oh, because I'm small, I'm getting crushed, and every once in a while that is the case.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: But for the majority it is not the case, because large corporations pay almost as much in total premium as small businesses do.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: It's just large corporations subsidize more of the premium on the employer contribution side.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: But I would say controlling cost.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: There's two segments here.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: There's like the under three segments really under 10 employees, between 10 and 50 employees and then over 50 employees, so under 10 employees.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: A lot of times we're talking about ACA rated plans.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Scott, we're talking about your age is 28.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Here's the rate right, because when the Affordable Care Act came out, it stated that you can't discriminate, essentially on medical plans, on pre-existing conditions and different health conditions, which is a good and a bad thing depending on the situation.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times with companies under 10 employees, it's just age banded.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: So you're 48, here's the rate, you're 38, here's the rate.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: And the only way to control the cost is plan design.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Once you have a few employees on the plan, then we can start looking at options like level funding.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So now I'm talking about like once you have a few on the plan so let's just say you're 10 to 50 employees at this time which actually takes into consideration the age of the employee, of your workforce, the average age, but also the health.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: So now we're starting to talk about risk and the actual health of your population and your employee demographics, which can be a really good thing for certain employers, and it sometimes is not a good thing for certain employers that don't have, you know, a relatively healthy workforce.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: And so those are kind of your two options as a U50 business.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Right, you can go the fully insured age banded route, right, that's like hey, here's your age, essentially there it is.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Or here's the average age of our company, here's the rate.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Or you can go the level funded route, which starts to take into consideration the risk and the health of the employees.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So those are kind of your two main options under 50, employees from a controlling cost standpoint.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And so those are kind of your two main options under 50, employees from a controlling cost standpoint.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And there's also a ton of carriers within both sides right, but as far as actually quoting the plan or rating the plan, those are the two options.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: So I would say, if you're a small business, make sure you're looking at both.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Like does it make more sense to do level funding?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Does it make more sense to do fully insured, age-banded rates and make sure that you're in the best position, cost wise, right Bank for your buck.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Are you with the best carrier?
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Are you in the best position?
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Once you get over 50, then it really starts becoming a risk game and the level of funding, of course, is a risk game.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: But, like that's one of the things a lot of employers don't understand it's like health insurance is risk, it's like any other insurance.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: So it's like if you can control cost meaning if your employees are relatively healthy, right from a conditions and ongoing claimant standpoint, you're going to traditionally have lower rates.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: And so then it becomes interesting conversations when you're above 50 employees, it's like you know, what wellness programs can we offer?
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: How can we incentivize the health and wellness of our staff, both physically and mentally?
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of elements to controlling costs.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I would say it really just depends on the employee, your size.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: But just making sure that the business owner and the HR team you know whoever ends up making the fractional CFO, whoever ends up, you know, helping with that decision is making sure like are we in the best spot for our company based on our current circumstance and our employee demographics?
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: And Christian, when you walk through with your clients, do you help them understand?
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, if you go to this level, or if you get a level of funding versus for a lean insurer or whatever those options are, this is what it's going to cost Exactly.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Yep, spot on.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: So we this is what it's going to cost Exactly.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yep, spot on.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: So we walk essentially it's a cost analysis, right.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: We walk through and look at, you know, some level funding options, we look at some fully insured options and there's a couple other options besides that.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I would say that is the 80%, 80 to 90%.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: But you also have, like POS, that some small employers are in, right, some, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 employee companies.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: You also have ICHRAs, which are individual coverage HRAs, which is essentially saying that all of my employees now are going to get coverage in the individual marketplace, but now I'm going to provide a tax-free reimbursement for them to do that as an employer.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of even if you're 15 employees, there's a bunch of options out there.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: And so it really is just like you said, scott, walking through the cost analysis, because we have clients on ICROS, we have clients on level funding, we have clients on fully insured, we have clients with the Chamber Consortium product now.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So it's just making sure that, like, from a cost analysis standpoint, what makes the most sense.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Do you recommend that companies?
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Or let me rephrase this how often do you recommend companies price this out?
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: That's a really good question, because I'm not going to say every year, because I think it's a burden every single year to like, really like.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's also a burden on your employees to change networks often right Now.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Changing networks sometimes is a necessary evil, depending on the situation, but it's not something that should happen every year.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Right Like, it's not.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Like you should go from Aetna and the next year Cigna and the next year Anthem, so it really gets that's a good way to have some unhappy employees.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Correct and potential.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: You know specialists and different doctors, facilities and practice groups as far as the in-network stuff.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So I would say, from a general rule of thumb, every three years at the bare minimum.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Some companies depending, like if you're a fast-growing company or if you have high turnover within your organization, like you have 50 employees and then you hire 25, there's 25.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: If you have a lot of turnover in your organization or your fast growth, it might make sense to do it every year, if not every two years.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But I would say a general rule of thumb, right, the 80% is like a good benchmark.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Every three years, yep.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about the other big factor here, or at least when I talk to folks, and that is how much do I contribute?
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: I mean as the employer, how much do I cover?
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: I've talked to people that, hey, we just offer benefits.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: They can get it all the way to.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I cover 100% because I want to make sure my employees don't go anywhere and, and you know, feel, feel they're been, they're, uh, valued.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: You know how do I come to that decision.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I would say it's so different for every employer, course, as you know, but there's a couple of general rules of thumb, like.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: The first rule of thumb is like what are other competitors of mine doing?
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Because you got to think, like, when you're offering a benefit program, the two main there's really three main reasons to offer main.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: There's really three main reasons to offer.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: It's to support the, you know, support the health of your, the health and wellness of your workforce.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: But it really is also to recruit new employees and retain your current ones, right?
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: So recruit and retain is such a big deal when it comes to employee benefits.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So you can look and there's some surveys or studies that like benchmarking surveys and studies that'll give you a general.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Now it won't give you like, hey, this employer is doing that, this employer is doing this, but it might say like, hey, you know, for a nonprofit between two and ten million in Virginia on average, here is the employer contribution.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: So I would say like, if you can at least start and figure out what your competitors are doing, because obviously the main purpose of a benefit program is to recruit and retain your current staff.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: So first of all, make sure you do some kind of research on what others are considering or what your competitors are doing, but also make sure it's worth it for your organization.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: We talked to a lot of small businesses that it's not worth it.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Right, like it's just not worth them.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: They're eight employees and they would contribute 6,000 a year per employee, which is a lot of money, right, we're talking $50,000 in additional expense.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: So I always say, like, especially when you're starting a benefit program, do you have employees that are pretty much demanding it or really really strong, like hey, we need a benefit program?
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Do you have employees that really want it?
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Or are you having a tough time recruiting new talent because of your benefit program?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Like, have you gotten feedback that like love the organization but like no benefit program, so we're not going to do that?
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So to kind of summarize on that statement, it's to really figure out, like what your kind of goes back to step one, right, like what the employees want, but then also contribution wise health insurance.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I will tell you benchmarking, I mean health insurance on average employers, even the small group space, contributes somewhere between 70 to 80% of employee only premium.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So employee-only premium is $650 on average, right, we're talking about at least 500 bucks a month.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Around that most employers even under 100, are doing, or a lot of them are doing, and so the budget could be.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: You know, am I willing to spend four to six, four to $7,000 per employee a year on health insurance?
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: And that's a tough question for certain organizations.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it makes sense and just sometimes it doesn't.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: But general rule of thumb is, like you know, between 70 and 80% of an employee only premium is pretty standard.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Now, obviously, a lot of companies do more and a lot of companies do less, but that I would say is a pretty good rule of thumb.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: A lot of companies do less, but that I would say is a pretty good rule of thumb.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And then also, on average, companies spend somewhere around 30% of payroll on benefits.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Now, that includes 401k, that includes all the benefits, not just health insurance, but health insurance is a big nugget of that 30%.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And I would say it's less than 30% in certain industries, like retail hospitality, certain industries, but it's also a lot higher in certain industries, like retail hospitality, certain industries, but it's also a lot higher in other industries, like professional services, and I think of, like, engineering firms, law firms, marketing firms.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Those firms might spend 90% right on employee only.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: So it's just making sure that you're ready for it, to be honest.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Christian being a numbers guy, I'm going to dig in on that rate that 30%.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, christian being a numbers guy, I'm going to dig in on that rate that 30%.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Do you calculate that on purely annual salary or do you include taxes as part of that number?
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: We use it just as a general rule of thumb.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: So really I'll just say basic salary.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't include too much tax.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: I would say like hey, this person yeah $100,000 a year.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: 30% of that is where you're going with that.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and once again that's an average.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I mean we have companies that do significantly less right.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: It might be 15% to 20% of total salaries the benefit program, and we have companies that do 40% to 50% of total salaries the benefit program.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: So it really is industry driven too, and competitor driven, and what your employee workforce, of course, really wants.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: A common question I hear is how much should I contribute and or how rich of benefits should I offer?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Generally, my answer because it's really a tough answer it's tough to answer that just straight away, right?
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want you to tell me if I'm right here is that it's a whole lot easier to increase how much you contribute each year than it is to decrease how much you contribute, meaning the employee is going to be paying more.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: And it's a lot easier to offer more richer benefits than it is to kind of go to cheaper benefits.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say you're spot on, because the second you start taking things away, it looks a lot worse than if you add stuff.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Right, of course you are.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Specifically, if you're a startup, right, five, 10, 15 employees and you're looking to implement benefits for the first time, make sure it's not over whatever budget amount that you know you can reasonably afford, because the last thing you want to do is like roll out this like platinum benefit program, you know, cover all this.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: And the next year you're like wait, we spent too much.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Now we got to lower the employer contribution from 85% to 60%.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: That's not a fun conversation.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: We've had that conversation, you know.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: And clients talking to their employees.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: That is not a fun conversation when we start slashing benefits at all.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So it's like, why don't we start at 60?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: And then, with the goal I think it's big to have the goal, we can't just say it's going to be 60 forever.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey, let's start at 60 maybe, or start at 50, even let's start at 50.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: And then next year let's see if we can get to 60.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Right, Next year, see if we can get to 60.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: That way you're kind of gradually improving it as the years go by, versus the other way.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad I'm pointing people in the right direction.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: You agree with me on that one Christian.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Well, it's also financially.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: You know, financially makes sense.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: But I would say, especially when we're talking about startup plans, don't bite off more than you can chew, for sure.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: And I always say, like if you introduce a new benefit too, like that looks good, like if you have a company who's like, oh, now I want to offer medical dental admissions for a long time.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: No, we very, very rarely, unless a specific situation ever start up a benefit plan with like six lines of coverage, because normally it's like, hey, let's do medical dental, and the next year we'll add vision, and the next year we'll add short-term and long-term disability, so that way you can really keep adding to the benefit program every year as well.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Well, let's kind of wrap this up on a positive that you agreed with me here, christian, I'm feeling good about myself, absolutely to wrap this up on a positive that you agreed with me here.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Christian, so I'm feeling good about myself, absolutely so I like to wrap up shows with one to three immediate takeaways that our listeners could literally put into action as soon as they turn off the podcast and wondering what you can share with us today.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: It might be something that you already mentioned and that's perfectly fine as well.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say a couple of takeaways.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: First, I'm going to kind of break it up a little bit because I'm going to start up and then I'm going to do if you already have an existing plan.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: So the takeaway first if you are looking at offering benefits, if you're starting up a plan, do your due diligence.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Don't just throw spaghetti on a wall and just hope it sticks right.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Make sure, if you're going to make an investment into a benefit program, make sure that there's going to be at least some return on that investment and make sure you're tailoring it specifically for your employees and maybe not for the owner, maybe not for yourself specifically, even though of course you can benefit from it.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: But if you're starting up a plan, make sure to do your due diligence, figure out what your employees really want and what they really need and then tailor a budget around that.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Hence the budgeting conversation with Scott.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: And I would say even and this second tip applies to both startups and existing benefit programs whether you're 10 employees or 100 employees I get so frustrated because a lot of companies come to us and they say we're small, there's not much we can do.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: That is complete BS.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: There's like six different cost containment options for health insurance if you're under 50 employees, and that doesn't include any of the carriers.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I'm just talking about different options like ICRA, peo, consortium level funding, all these different options that have carriers within right Within those options.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: So if you're at 15 employees or 150, I don't care what size you are, you have more options than you think you do and you have more benefits available than you think you do.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Hence the voluntary benefit conversation, right?
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: So whether you're starting up a plan or you already have one, there are more options than you think.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: I guarantee it regarding cost, cost containment, but also regarding the benefits that you can offer.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: And then number three, I would say the third takeaway I'd give business owners is just make sure it's like you can create a great benefit program without breaking the bank.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: And so maybe figure out like we're going to contribute a lot towards medical and then we're going to offer dental vision and short term completely voluntary.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: That's fine.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: It's like you can create a great benefit program without having to pay for everything.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: And a lot of employers have that misconception that if I offer a benefit or if I have a great program, I got to pay for all this stuff and obviously you're going to have to pay for something, but you can really tailor it to a way that you can have a great benefit program and you don't have to contribute employer-wise for certain lines.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: So those are three takeaways.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I would say.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you Also ask all of our guests.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I always enjoy a good book recommendation or podcast.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Anything you have for us today.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I have a podcast that I have been really listening to I don't know if you ever heard of Bear Performance Nutrition, BPN.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: No, I don't think so.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: So Nick Bear is the CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition and he's grown it from like the first year, I think, they did $20,000 in revenue.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: The second year, they did $20,000 in revenue.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: The third year, I think, they also did $20,000 in revenue and I think now it's a $50 million company.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: He's been doing it for a decade now.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: What I love it's a podcast.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I guess, before I get ahead of myself, it's called the Nick Bear Podcast.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: What I love about it is he really documents his journey as a business owner from zero until where he is today and just goes into specifically what they did, what the revenues were, how to build a brand, how to build a culture, and he really breaks it down from, like his, you know, growing a business from 20,000 revenue to 50 million, which is a really cool.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: It's a very authentic podcast.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Not to mention he's young and he's an absolute animal when it comes to fitness.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, he just ran a two 38 marathon or something.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Is that real?
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Could be Scott.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: But I love just listening where, like the way he because he thinks about it the right way, like he's not in it for like the money or he's not in it for like they're not owned by private, like they're not in it just to make money, he's in it because, like building the organization and building the culture it's I just think it's a great listen.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: So that's the only podcast that I would say like religiously listen to all right, yeah, that that does sound, I like.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I do like podcasts that are real and give you like specific examples or real life, right and rather than.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, you know, I made 200 million dollars and all you have to do is one, two, three.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Well, okay, I'm sure there's a few things in there beyond that.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, One of his quotes that I absolutely love is like it is so much better to be consistently good than occasionally great.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: And just talking about like just consistently being, you know, 1% better and just consistently like showing up every single day versus you know, I crushed it one day and the next three days aren't great, right, it's like no, no, no.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Better to be consistently good over time than occasionally great.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: I agree with that one.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Well, this has been great Christian.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Where can people find out more about you online?
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Sure, I probably post too many LinkedIn videos, but find me on LinkedIn.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Christian Mosier should come up and obviously company BNX Consulting Group.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: You can just Google it, go to our website and we're obviously pretty big on LinkedIn and the website, so feel free to check us out there.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: If you have more questions, scott, feel free to give them my email.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: All right and I will say I do follow you on LinkedIn and I do enjoy the videos.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thanks, yeah, I appreciate it.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks for joining us today, Christian.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, Scott.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me and for the great conversation.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: All right, folks, that's it for today.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: If you liked the show or found something useful, try texting somebody right now and say hey, I have a podcast recommendation.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: It's Budget your Business.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: I want you to listen to it and get back to me.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Tell me what you think of it.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: I'm Scott Keller and I hope you join me next time for Budget your Business.